DENNIS ARGALL. Not so scary under Korean skies

Australia has had yet another high level former US defence official breeze in, this time to warn that we might be attacked by the DPRK. Whether there is or is not a concerted plan to all this, the visits of the grave and famous and warnings about improbable threat serve a purpose of keeping us from wandering away from Uncle Sam’s skirt in these strange times. It is useful to step away from speculation and look at some things actually happening, taking the last few days as a slice of life.

On 1 October the US Secretary of State, visiting Beijing, told journalists “…the United States is in direct contact with North Korea and is looking into whether Kim Jong Un is open to talks.” [Washington Post]

I think it’s a perilous business to tell journalists you may have a fish biting. On the same day a DPRK spokesman “called on the United States…to halt what it claimed to be a hostile policy toward Pyongyang, threatening to turn America into a “sea of flames.” [Yonhap, Seoul]. On 28 September Choe Son-hui, director general of the North American department at the DPRK Foreign Ministry, at talks in Moscow, “stressed that it is necessary for the U.S. to stop its hostile policy toward the DPRK in order to defuse tension and ensure peace and security in the Korean Peninsula and the Northeast Asian region.” [KCNA]

On 28 September on ROK Armed Forces Day, ROK President Moon awarded a “the highest unit-level award given by the ROK government … to all the Sailors of CNFK [US Combined Naval Forces Korea] for “outstanding contribution to the defense of the Republic of Korea” [Stars and Stripes]. Since the Korean War ROK forces have remained under US control in wartime. In his speech on the same occasion President Moon called again for transfer of ‘OPCON’ from the US to the ROK: “It’s only when we regain wartime operational control of our military that North Korea will fear us more and the South Korean public will trust the military more. The goal of this administration is to accelerate the transfer of wartime operational control,” [Hankyoreh]

Then President Moon and Mrs Moon went to have lunch with ordinary seamen on an ROK naval vessel, the Yonhap photo showing happy laughter.

On 1 October, the ROK monthly trade figures showed a year-on-year increase in exports of 35%. In September “outbound shipments came to US$55.1 billion for the month, up from $40.8 billion tallied a year earlier…Imports also rose 21.7 percent on-year to $41.4 billion.” Petrochemical exports in the wake of hurricane damage to the US oil industry were a significant component.

Another round of discussions on the US ROK Free Trade Agreement will take place in Washington on 4 October.

Also on 1 October the Korea Resources Corporation published an estimate of the value of DPRK mineral resources at approximately USD2.8 trillion, fourteen times those of the ROK. Modest joint ROK-DPRK minerals projects have been suspended for some time. Sanctions exist, prospects remain.

Again on 1 October in response to the decision of the ROK government to extend electrical vehicle subsidies to Tesla cars previously excluded because they take more than ten hours to charge, Tesla announced plans to extend its network of charging stations in South Korea.

Also on the same day, President Moon released a video wishing everyone well for travel home over the Chuseok (Harvest Moon) holiday break… and separately congratulated DPRK figure skaters on their qualification for the Winter Olympics in the ROK next year.

Meanwhile in the wake of the trilateral summit between heads of state of the US, ROK and Japan in New York (at the Korean Lotte hotel, not a Trump hotel), “[t]he Blue House and White House have reportedly shared concerns that “distorted” reports from the Japanese press could “cause fissures” in trilateral coordination.”

This report does not implicate Prime Minister Abe in the shaping of the news items attracting concern, but anxious Prime Minister Abe has been using articulation of tension and criticism of the ROK as well as the DPRK and China (plus a USD18 billion education and aged care package, to be paid for by a GST increase of 2% in 2019) in support of his campaign for re-election on 22 October.

On 27 September, at an event to mark the tenth anniversary, on 4 October, of the meeting in 2007 between then ROK President Roh Moo-hyun and the DPRK President Kim Jong-il, President Moon said: “Many of the matters agreed upon in the Oct. 4 summit statement can be implemented even now. I hope that both North and South Korea will declare that the Oct. 4 summit statement remains valid,” He once again called for the restoration of military talks, humanitarian cooperation and the reunions of the families divided by the Korean War. Restoring military talks was particularly urgent, Moon said, “to relax inter-Korean tensions.” [Hankyoreh]

In his address to the UN General Assembly in New York on 21 September, President Moon quoted former US President Ronald Reagan: “Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”

This ROK Government demonstrates a flexibility and skill in dealing with all sides in the current difficult situation. Many domestic supporters were alarmed by President Moon’s siding with President Trump on issues relating to the DPRK, but had Moon been strident rather than flexible, troubles would abound domestically and perhaps more dramatically in the trade relationship with the US. Nothing would have been gained strategically by antagonism, just as nothing is gained by being joined at the hip with a major power.

Dennis Argall, a former Australian Ambassador to China, has been an observer of North Asian affairs since 1970

this (in 2017) is a new blog...

The word 'cephalophoria' suggested itself to me, is my own invention, as meaning "love of free mindedness". St Denis, my name saint who apparently could not spell, probably a common enough thing in the third century CE, was a cepalophore. That is a member of a small group of christian saints who somewhat prior to the manner of M Python, carried on doing what they were doing after their heads were cut off. Much impressing ladies for a bit, see here and below, St Denis on the wall of Notre Dame de Paris heading out of town after an encounter with the unwilling.

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I have worked through a number of blogs since 2000. I have had some eight domain names registered for different projects, of which only 'A Place of Info' remains. It resides in a storage space at ipower.com, on an internet superhighway in the USA. That storage space contains legacy folders of such projects previously 'live' with their own domain names. Here are two of them:

St Denis de Paris

A case of severe independent-mindedness - a cephalophore - heading out of Paris still preaching to closely admiring women, after an encounter with the unwilling circa 250CE. (image borrowed from Cool Stuff in Paris of Manning Leonard Krull, click on photo.)